Do you have what it takes to be a Fight Night warrior? Fight Night is back - for our 11th year - on 24 May 2018. 20 fearless channel contenders will once again immerse themselves into the brutal world of boxing to raise money for their chosen charities.

What opportunities will the enlarged company offer partners, and what can they expect from the vendor in the second half of 2018? All will be revealed in this web seminar, which will see Datto SVP Mark Banfield lay out the vendor’s plans and discuss the investments it is making in its UK business.

Many businesses are moving to the cloud. In fact, 12% of SMBs have already made the move, and by 2020, 50% of SMBs will have moved all of their business systems to the cloud. Take advantage of this huge market opportunity by becoming a cloud service provider for your existing business.

To grow, to remain relevant to the customers, and to remain profitable, IT channels (in all their forms) will have to master a number of business model transformations in the cloud and digital transformation era. Read more to learn about the key transformations that IT channels will need to address, in order to bring new capabilities to customers and be successful in the future.

The double-digit growth came mainly from the consumer segment thanks to an early Christmas rush, the analyst said, but added that business-focused sales were up 6.9 per cent during the same period.

"Business growth has seen a slowdown over the past few months as the XP migration effect is lessening," the analyst said. "[But] unlike consumer growth however, the rise in business sales in early Q4 2014 again came on the back of a positive performance one year ago."

Microsoft ended support for Windows XP back in the spring, which prompted organisations to refresh their PC estate in the run-up to the deadline and in the months shortly after.

A 14.9 per cent spike in business notebook sales drove the overall boost in the segment, which was enough to offset a "small decline" in desktop sales.

In the UK, overall PC volume sales through distribution were up 14.5 per cent annually in early Q4.

The country's growth was dwarfed by that of Spain and France, whose figures were up 37.4 per cent and 20.4 per cent respectively.

Germany and Italy performed similarly to the UK - their sales were up 12.3 per cent and 13.2 per cent respectively, but Swiss sales slumped 3.2 per cent over the period.